Wireless technologies are now prevalent in our daily activities, and present within a myriad of commercial and consumer level devices. Examples of such wireless technologies include cellular phones, multi-functional wireless devices (smart phones), personal computers, media devices, and internet dongles among others. As demand for these and other devices continues to grow, there remains a need to improve wireless communications attributes, such as but not limited to: network bandwidth capacity, connectivity, data transfer (download) speeds, and health attributes such as specific absorption rate, among others. In accordance these requirements, the field of wireless communications is continuously in need of improvements for keeping up with industry growth and consumer demands.
With the recent advent of modal antenna systems as disclosed in commonly owned U.S. Pat. No. 7,911,402, titled “ANTENNA AND METHOD FOR STEERING ANTENNA BEAM DIRECTION”, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/029,564, also titled “ANTENNA AND METHOD FOR STEERING ANTENNA BEAM DIRECTION”, there has been provided such systems adapted for multi-mode communications, wherein each of several antenna modes provides a distinct antenna radiation pattern for steering antenna beam direction and other radiation characteristics; each of these references is hereby incorporated by reference. Accordingly, a revolution in wireless technologies will be supported by various improvements utilizing modal antenna systems for use within the aforementioned devices and associated communications networks.
Currently available antenna systems and devices associated therewith can be described within a wireless network as nomadic devices, since these devices roam about a network without a fixed pattern of movement. In practice, currently available devices can be viewed as traveling about a network through a series of incremental waypoints, for example as a wireless device user walks or drives from a first location, or waypoint, to a second. In fact, the path of a traveling user can be reduced to a series of integral waypoints about a wireless network, wherein at each waypoint the wireless device is transmitting signal to one or more network base station transceivers (BT's).
Furthermore, many devices are now capable of data acquisition across a variety of networks. For example, certain multi-function devices are capable of internet browsing and file downloads over both cellular networks (base station transceivers), and WLAN networks (access points).
It would therefore be beneficial to provide antenna systems and associated methods for improving device connectivity about a wireless network.